Fresh B-
| Fresh 70%
| Sherlock Holmes (2009) | "
Sherlock Holmes, while a diverting enough night out, is both fun and numb, enjoyable and exhausting. It's a case of more adding up to less." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Dec 23, 2009 |
Rotten C-
| Rotten 22%
| Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel (2009) | "
Will kids eat up this cutely fractious claptrap? Of course they will. They'll eat up whatever you put in front of them. But that doesn't make The Squeakquel good for them." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Dec 23, 2009 |
Fresh B
| Fresh 83%
| Avatar (2009) | "
As visual spectacle, Avatar is indelible, but as a movie it all but evaporates as you watch it." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Dec 11, 2009 |
Fresh B+
| Fresh 76%
| Invictus (2009) | "
The film's speechifying is at times overexplicit, yet Freeman lets the words breathe, and Damon, as the cautious Afrikaner brought to a higher place by Mandela's authority, acts with a
coolly impassive fervor." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Dec 9, 2009 |
Rotten C
| Rotten 37%
| Nine (2009) | "
Marshall's staging lacks the thrilling unity he brought to Chicago. The numbers, while lively, remain cluttered and stage-bound." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Dec 9, 2009 |
Fresh A-
| Fresh 82%
| A Single Man (2009) | "
This is the first movie directed by Tom Ford, the former fashion designer, and he proves a born filmmaker with a rapturous eye." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Dec 9, 2009 |
Fresh B+
| Fresh 74%
| The Young Victoria (2009) | "
Director Jean-Marc Vallée's images have a creamy stateliness, but this is no gilded
princess fantasy -- it's the story of a budding ruler who learns to control her surroundings, and Blunt makes that journey at once authentic and relevant." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Dec 9, 2009 |
Fresh A
| Fresh 89%
| Up in the Air (2009) | "
Up in the Air is light and dark, hilarious and tragic, romantic and real. It's everything that Hollywood has forgotten how to do; we're blessed that Jason Reitman has remembered." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Dec 2, 2009 |
Rotten C+
| Rotten 57%
| Brothers (2009) | "
Brothers isn't badly acted, but as directed by the increasingly impersonal Jim Sheridan, it's lumbering and heavy-handed, a film that piles on overwrought dramatic twists until it begins to creak under the weight of its presumed significance." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Dec 2, 2009 |
Fresh B+
| Fresh 73%
| William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe (2010) | "
Leading the defense in the 1969–70 trial of the Chicago Seven, William Kunstler became a radical and a celebrity, and this vivid documentary captures how those two facets of his life worked together in morally urgent and contradictory ways." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Dec 2, 2009 |
Fresh B-
| Fresh 72%
| The Road (2009) | "
The Road, for all its vivid desolation, remains a curiously unmoving experience." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Nov 24, 2009 |
Rotten C
| Fresh 72%
| The Blind Side (2009) | "
What The Blind Side offers is a kind of liberal Hollywood version of conservative values: all rock-solid valor, all the time." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Nov 18, 2009 |
Fresh A-
| Fresh 85%
| Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009) | "
Bad Lieutenant doesn't go where you expect, but it has a stubborn, trippy logic." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Nov 18, 2009 |
Fresh B+
| Fresh 90%
| The Messenger (2009) | "
The Messenger honors those who fought and died in Iraq by acting out, with an anguished handheld immediacy, how large each of those sacrifices really is." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Nov 11, 2009 |
Rotten C+
| Fresh 67%
| Dare (2009) | "
The actors, all great camera subjects, help give director Adam Salky's overly pat movie a trace of confessional conviction." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Nov 11, 2009 |
Rotten C-
| Rotten 44%
| The Box (2009) | "
Kelly has talent, but for his next movie, he might try coming down to earth and forgetting about the people who control the lightning." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Nov 11, 2009 |
Fresh A
| Fresh 93%
| Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) | "
To Wes Anderson: More, please!" — Entertainment Weekly Posted Nov 11, 2009 |
Fresh A
| Fresh 91%
| Precious: Based on the Novel PUSH by Sapphire (2009) | "
Precious captures how a lost girl rouses herself from the dead, and Daniels shows unflinching courage as a filmmaker by going this deep into the pathologies that may still linger in the closets of some impoverished inner-city lives." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Nov 4, 2009 |
Fresh A
| Rotten 55%
| Disney's A Christmas Carol (2009) | "
Disney's A Christmas Carol is a marvelous and touching yuletide toy of a movie, and the miracle is that it goes right back to the gilded Victorian spirit of those black-and-white films of yore." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Nov 4, 2009 |
Rotten F
| Rotten 53%
| The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009) | "
The Men Who Stare at Goats is a magical-realist sitcom war farce that ends up being about nothing but its own slovenly smugness." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Nov 4, 2009 |
Rotten C
| Rotten 18%
| The Fourth Kind (2009) | "
Too often, The Fourth Kind makes the paranormal look disappointingly normal." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Nov 4, 2009 |
Fresh A-
| Fresh 80%
| Collapse (2009) | "
It's not a pretty picture, but it is not a naive one either. The grippingly articulate Ruppert is like Noam Chomsky as a wry pundit of doom." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Nov 4, 2009 |
Fresh B
| Fresh 73%
| That Evening Sun (2009) | "
Hal Holbrook was born to play sly, cantankerous rascals." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Nov 4, 2009 |
Fresh B
| Fresh 80%
| Michael Jackson's This Is It (2009) | "
Would those concerts have returned him to his magical pedestal? We'll never know the answer, of course. But watching this movie, at least we get a feel of it." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Oct 28, 2009 |
Rotten D
| Rotten 45%
| Saw VI (2009) | "
The Saw series long ago cannibalized its cleverest bloodbath gimmicks, but now it's figured out a new way to torture us: by taking a barb-wire stab at political relevance." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Oct 23, 2009 |
Fresh B
| Rotten 48%
| Astro Boy (2009) | "
Astro Boy is a marvelously designed piece of cartoon kinetics, with the pleasing soft colors and rounded-metal tactility of an atomic-age daydream." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Oct 21, 2009 |
Rotten C
| Rotten 50%
| Antichrist (2009) | "
The impotent folly of Antichrist is that von Trier has made it his mission to shock the bourgeoisie in an era when they can no longer be shocked." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Oct 21, 2009 |
Fresh B-
| Rotten 25%
| Motherhood (2009) | "
[Thurman is] quite funny, but her performance is at once winning and overstated." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Oct 21, 2009 |
Rotten C
| Rotten 11%
| The Stepfather (2009) | "
The trouble with the movie, apart from its rather monotonous dourness of tone, is that everyone in the family... comes off as tougher, smarter, and quicker on the draw than the stepfather who's supposed to be outfoxing them." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Oct 18, 2009 |
Rotten D
| Rotten 56%
| Trucker (2009) | "
Monaghan, so good in Gone Baby Gone, mopes self-consciously through the role of Diane, a loner who finds her heart when she's thrown together with her estranged 11-year-old son (Jimmy Bennett), whom she takes on the road. Yes, it's one of those movies." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Oct 14, 2009 |
Fresh B+
| Fresh 96%
| Crude (2009) | "
It's a David-and-Goliath tale, full of anger and disturbing accusation, but it's also inspiring." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Oct 14, 2009 |
Rotten C-
| Rotten 24%
| Law Abiding Citizen (2009) | "
What I mostly noticed is how quickly I've grown tired of Butler's mush-mouthed bravura, and also how much I hope that Foxx, who looks bored, holds his slumming down to this one film." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Oct 14, 2009 |
Fresh A
| Fresh 82%
| Black Dynamite (2009) | "
Black Dynamite blends satire, nostalgia, and cinema deconstruction into a one-of-a-kind comedy high." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Oct 14, 2009 |
Fresh B+
| Fresh 94%
| Good Hair (2010) | "
Chris Rock's deeply funny and very serious documentary about the African-American obsession with straightened tresses." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Oct 7, 2009 |
Fresh B-
| Rotten 12%
| Couples Retreat (2009) | "
Thanks to Vaughn, Favreau, and the stray sharp lines that pop out of everyone else, the film at least offers the lively sound of egos that still know how to swing." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Oct 7, 2009 |
Fresh B+
| Fresh 81%
| The Horse Boy (2009) | "
A lyrical and stirring meditation on the mystery of autism." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Sep 30, 2009 |
Fresh B-
| Fresh 67%
| Paris (2009) | "
The French director Cédric Klapisch is a glib wizard at weaving folks together, but there are too many secondhand characters roving through Paris, his latest ensemble piece." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Sep 30, 2009 |
Fresh A-
| Fresh 82%
| Paranormal Activity (2009) | "
With its this-is-really-happening vibe, Paranormal Activity scrapes away 30 years of encrusted nightmare clichés. The fear is real, all right, because the fear is really in you." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Sep 30, 2009 |
Fresh B+
| Fresh 73%
| More Than a Game (2009) | "
More Than a Game is a documentary, but it's every inch a triumph-of-the-underdogs fairy tale." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Sep 30, 2009 |
Fresh A-
| Fresh 87%
| A Serious Man (2009) | "
A Serious Man isn't perfect -- I'm still grappling with the powerfully offbeat ending -- but it's cathartic to see the Coens finally show you a bit of who they are, or at least where they came from." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Sep 30, 2009 |
Fresh B
| Fresh 75%
| Capitalism: A Love Story (2009) | "
At its best, Capitalism: A Love Story is a searing outcry against the excesses of a cutthroat time. At its worst, it's dorm-room Marxism." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Sep 23, 2009 |
Fresh B+
| Rotten 22%
| I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell (2009) | "
he film is consistently fun, and Tucker's comeuppance
will leave you gasping (if not gagging) with laughter." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Sep 23, 2009 |
Fresh B-
| Rotten 41%
| Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (2009) | "
Krasinski preserves Wallace's whooshing roller coasters of words, powered by the fuel of confession." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Sep 23, 2009 |
Fresh B-
| Fresh 100%
| Still Walking (2009) | "
Though [Koreeda] has made a film of droll and dry observational precision, its emotional minimalism is almost fetishistic -- and, by the end, a tad frustrating." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Sep 9, 2009 |
Rotten C
| Rotten 4%
| Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (2009) | "
Douglas makes smarm a chewy pleasure, but this is a noir in search of a hero we can root for because we actually buy what he’s doing." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Sep 9, 2009 |
Rotten D
| Rotten 30%
| Gamer (2009) | "
As the brutish Kable, Gerard Butler must find out who's pulling his strings, but it's the audience whose chain gets yanked by this headache-inducing techno-violent mishmash." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Sep 8, 2009 |
Rotten C+
| Fresh 63%
| Extract (2009) | "
Didn't Judge realize that Extract, with its plastic setups and one-dimensional harpies, plays like Kevin Smith remaking a bad George Segal comedy from 1978?" — Entertainment Weekly Posted Sep 2, 2009 |
Fresh A-
| Fresh 87%
| Big Fan (2009) | "
An unblinking look at the hidden (or perhaps not so
hidden) pathology of American sports mania, in which the power and victory of your team becomes the sole conduit for your self-worth." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Sep 2, 2009 |
Fresh B
| Rotten 58%
| Art & Copy (2009) | "
An entertaining but also oddly naive documentary about American advertising." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Sep 2, 2009 |
Rotten C+
| Rotten 28%
| The Final Destination (2009) | "
Once again, a group of pretty young things who have escaped the opening disaster proceed to die, one by one, as fate catches up with them." — Entertainment Weekly Posted Sep 1, 2009 |
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